Subflooring

We’ve been away for a few weeks, hence the lack of updates. However, some things have been happening while we’ve been away, including the preparation for the porch, and the Heat-Recovery Ventilation (HRV) system installation. I’ll deal with the latter in a more detailed post when we return (soon), but for now, here are some pictures of the plywood subflooring downstairs, and also the innovative use of left-over pieces of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) to form a kitchen island and bench for the entrance. It’s great to have a builder who is also a trained carpenter!

One thing to note in the pictures is that we had a slight problem with the sliding door on the south side that we’ve known about for a while and adjusted our plans for. Basically, the door size doesn’t take into account the fact that we had decided to install a wooden floor on top of the concrete. So, if we don’t want to have the floor being above the level of the door frame, we have to drop it slightly around the frame. What we will do is have tiles the same as in the entrance hallway, and use stair-nosing to link between these and the floor. Since, in Japanese style, we don’t wear shoes in the house, it will actually make for a useful space to leave shoes in the summer when we will use the sliding doors more. These small mistakes we make in the design and building process can be really annoying but solving the little problems is quite satisfying and can sometimes result in something that is in some ways better than your original plans.